II. Like oil and water
"This thing, this whole thing, it’s... It's a loaded gun with the safety off, is what it is."
Recap –
Hedy, one of the four participants of a female-only reintegration program on a Manitoban ranch, makes a mistake leading to the escape of horses. The ex-convicts and the two program managers work together to bring them back to their pasture while static emerges in the group regarding Hedy’s intellectual disability.
Companion Playlist (updated) –
Chapter II. Like oil and water.
Seems like the paint was originally blue but it’s hard to say now. It’s tatty, crumbling. Tad can still make out “Billberries Auto Parts” as he parks J.R.’s pickup truck in front of the metal shutters. The 20-year-old bangs on them, scares a few stray cats. He takes in this small mining town still asleep as he scratches his forearm. A house from the 1940s with a plywood plank where a window should be, a gravel extraction site nearby, pot-holes-ridden roads begging for asphalt, a brick-walled beer store with no windows, an idle truck where three men in bright construction jackets finish their graveyard shift with liquor and tall boys, telling tales, sharing body counts. Tad wonders if they have some, if maybe he could buy some from them with the extra money he's making giving J.R. a hand. Not much, just for today. He wouldn't stand out with his oversized hoodie and hunting pants, his neck tattoo crawling up to his jawline. Chances are they would sell to him if they have some. He's inches away from going up to them now, but the shutters open and he jumps back in the truck to park it inside.
It's a small operation, with only enough room for two vehicles. A feeble puzzle of auto parts, decade-old tires of random size and width, and bits of engine on the greasy shelves. Tad gives the once-over to the owners, two brothers who took over their dad's business.
“Beast of a truck you got there.” Wayne, the oldest, pie-eyed, walks around the pickup. Tad scratches his forearm, “Toyotas, man. Just passed 450 and still counting. Not mine, though.”
“Issue with it?”
“Just looking to replace that hitch ball, there. And see if you guys could sell a trailer hatch, like a trailer coupler?”
Wayne crouches, studies the hitch ball, its bad case of “flesh-eating disease”.
“How big of a trailer are we talking about?”
Tad searches for a note on his phone and shoots a look at the younger brother, Ian, sitting on a stool near the office. Mid 20s, curly-headed a la The Little Prince. A praying mantis trapped in a young man's skin suit.
“Uh, it's an 18-footer. Gon' be carrying a, uh... Shit, yeah, a lot of supplies.”
“Got a weight, give or take?”
“Saddles, one hay bale, maybe two, one prospector tent and other canvas tents with the poles, ropes, some fifty boxes of tranquilizers, water jugs, canned goods, duffle bags with clothing, ropes, uh... Tons of other shit. Here, it says a little over eight metric tons.”
Wayne ponders. Shoots a look at Ian who gives him a slight nod.
“We got solid hitch balls to replace this one and the trailer coupler ain't gon' be a problem. Don’t see a trailer out there so I figure you didn’t bring it in? Well, we’ll show ya out to connect the wires so your trailer’s lights work. Brakes and blinkers.”
“‘Preciate it. Owner just gave me 350, so... Think that’ll cover it?”
“Yessir.”
“‘Preciate it.”
“He’s a troublemaker, eh?”
“What’s that?”
“Bit of a kooky horse if ya need fifty boxes of tranquilizer is what I say.”
“Oh yeah, no, that’s-- It’s a life-supply of medication for a few horses. It’s like-- It’s a social program or whatnot, bunch of girls bring horses to BC and they get a job after that. Something like that. They bring tranqs and other stuff in exchange.”
“Like school girls, just graduated?”
“Ex-cons.”
It ices the room a little bit. “None of ‘em could find a job after their sentences, so. They ride and get a job there if they pull it off. Last chance kind of thing.”
“Neat. Across Canada then?”
“Got the road all mapped out I reckon, yeah.”
Wayne studies Tad for a moment, carving his forearm with his yellow nails. “Need something else, bud? While Ian gets started?”
Ian watches the two lock eyes, studying each other, gauging whether they're on the same wavelength. “...Sure, yeah. If ya got any.”
It took Ian less than half an hour to put the new hitch ball in place, his pianist fingers dancing around wrenches, bolts, and chains. His second language, the very thing he excels at, and so his entire focus is on the hushed conversation going on in the nearby office. He could hear Tad detailing the ins and outs of the program and the trip plan to Wayne, shooting the shit while prepping "breakfast”.
“They have campsites here and there across the prairies. I recommended Black Mare Lake near the border with Saskatchewan, know about that one?”
“Just north of the res', north of Wepu?”
“The good ol’ Road 168. Then, yeah, across Saskatchewan, Alberta, going north of the Rockies. Boom, BC.”
“Just livin’ the dream.”
And now the voices stop. Ian hears a rubber going loose, something dropping in a tin plate. A short silence before some groans coming from deep down, making the whole rib cage purr. Wayne murmurs, “Yeah. Came across that green one recently, best one I had in a while.”
“Fuck yeah. Got more?”
“Nuh-uh.” Waynes scratches his throat, takes a dead serious tone. “So, bud. You're going with ‘em to Black Mare Lake or is it just the two guys, those two program managers, and the four girls?”
Ian winces. Finishes to tighten the hitch ball and scampers to the office. It's the size of a car, the walls entirely covered in invoices and notices. Wayne doesn't even register Ian coming in, his stern eyes still on Tad, half-awake half-dead on a chair, drifting in and out.
“Two guys, four girls, that's it, no--”
“Wayne, I'm done, it's done, he’s good to go.”
“Six people total, that's it?” But Tad enjoys his high, and the brothers finally lock eyes, Ian with an imploring “Quit your shit” look on his face, his brother only with a dog-hungry one.
And Tad finally blurts, “Yeah. Five riding and J.R. with the truck going from camp to camp. That's it.”
There's a defeat in Boggs' glacier-blue eyes as he stares at something ahead, sitting in a small stable with Oneida, Jean and Hazel who scrape their horses' hooves with a hoof pick. They take off the solid mix of mud, dirt, and straw with ease and confidence, swift and smooth, steady hands and fluid movements.
“We'd split into three groups? Look for about an hour, talk to the other farms nearby, see if they spotted him?” But Oneida doesn't get an answer, no one's focus being on the lost colt at the moment. Everyone stares ahead now, the same defeat in their eyes. And so Oneida changes her tone, soft and motherly, “She still got a week or so. A week to tame him. She'll get there, eh?”
Boggs scratches his fishing net-like beard, points at the horses' hooves, “These puppies are fixing on winning a beauty contest with the manicure you giving ‘em”, and makes for the office, walking alongside the small arena they've all been staring at, a fenced circle of dirt and sand.
Wrench, a big black mustang with a harness around its nose and neck, bucks and rears in there. Goes in a circle, looks for a weak spot in this rusty metal fence, looks for a way out like an inmate on Death Row having a fit. And behind him, Hedy. Stretched-out hands, clicking her tongue, whispering kind and tender words. Barely any air left in her lungs. She trots behind him as if to say “Why won't you let me love you, Wrench, don’t be cruel now!” but these two are like oil and water.
Boggs enters J.R.'s office at the back, a clean and tidy wooden haven with a desk in the middle. “Fancy pants”, that’s what Boggs sometimes called J.R. because his stuff was always in order, his beard nicely cut, his clothes clean. No wonder he was a wunderkind in the army. Sometimes he did meditation in the grass full of dew in the morning, humming weird frequencies to calm his nerves and to ground him. Listened to those YouTube videos, the ones that last four hours, the winds and rains ones. He wasn’t keen on everyone knowing about this, said it would impair his tough-guy image, but it helped with bad memories from when he was on the field.
He turns his laptop screen toward Boggs, shows him a sophisticated weather radar. “Went up to 110 millimeters. And that’s just for the first three days, the ones after keep changing. 80, 50, they don’t know. 90 kilometers per hour wind. Some communities even think about canceling schools, they say it'll be a bad one.”
“Saskatchewan?”
“In the clear. Even the east.” J.R. reflects while Boggs pecks on some sunflower seeds. “I’m not having them under the rain, not for the first days of the trip.”
“Merle: when he wants his horses?”
“Soon as possible.”
“...All of ‘em?”
“Fuck him.”
The call with Merle went better than J.R. thought. The sanctuary manager in B.C. wasn’t grieving the potential loss of a colt much, said it was a shame but J.R. could hear him devour breakfast between sentences. The deal was to monitor how the “injury” the colt got “getting caught in these gates” evolves and see if he could tag along next year.
Boggs pecks on more seeds, “Well. Tomorrow morning it is, then.”
“We’ll be dry in Saskatchewan when it hits Manitoba.”
“Won’t have to wait till it passes, won’t be knee-deep in the muck.”
“Early on Merle’s schedule.”
“To make it up for the lost colt.”
“Beat the Colorado low.”
Boggs adjusts himself in his chair, ready to deliver what he's been reflecting on in the stable a few minutes before, what he felt in the days leading up to all this, and what he's been sensing for weeks now and that everyone seems too polite to say. “She can’t do it, J.R.. Colorado low or not. Sunshine, twenty degrees, soft breeze: she couldn’t do it either. She been scampering after Wrench day in day out for weeks. Nothing. Those two: oil and water is what I say, she can’t break him and he won’t let her even try. The three others, they ready. Good riders. They had experience before and it goddamn shows. They ready. But if we go with Hedy and that brain wired backward of hers, after she lied on her form saying she can ride—‘cause it has to be a lie—then this thing, this whole thing, it’s, it’s... A loaded gun with the safety off is what it is.”
J.R. takes that in. When you've been putting blinders on for so long and a good friend finally slaps them out of your face. It hurts, but it's also a relief. Don't have to pretend anymore.
He stands up, stares outside with his arms crossed. For a good thirty seconds at least. Finally takes a big “all right then” breath and trudges out of the office.
He makes for the arena. Senses Boggs on his heels, he knows the three women over there have their eyes on him, senses his throat getting a little thicker. He leans on the metal fence, "Hedy! Hedy, you come here a sec!"
She trots toward J.R., her attention still on Wrench pacing around the cage, “I touched his nose a bit, I did, I swear, he stopped and I touched it. He got away right after, but I touched his nose, I think he liked it, we’re becoming-- I think he liked it, yes, yes.”
“Listen, Hedy. Weather’s getting worse in the coming days, and we’re gonna have to move sooner than we thought if we want to ride for at least 45 days like we planned.”
J.R. snaps his fingers in her face to redirect her attention, not sure if she's even hearing him. “Hey, Hedy. We can’t take the responsibility of having someone riding a horse they haven’t been able to train and aren’t familiar with. Wrench was probably not a good fit from the get-go, granted, but we didn’t know. And the sanctuary won’t accept horses that aren’t adopted endangered mustangs.”
“OK.”
“Hedy, fucking pay attention. We can’t pair you with another mustang this late in the program; we can’t pair you with a horse we already trained; and we can’t have you ride Wrench.”
“OK.”
Boggs leans over J.R.'s ear, “Jugular, kid.”
“You're off the program, Hedy.”
Hedy’s eyes jump from one imaginary point to another.
“Wh-- What does it mean, what do I do now, do I stay here, I don’t–”
“We’ll make a few calls and find a solution for you, but you’re off the program. It’s over. Today.”
J.R. strides away, needs to find shelter in his office, doesn't want to show anyone how much it took from him. Hazel, still by her horse, monitors Hedy and clocks that she mechanically touches the tip of her thumb with her other fingers... One after the other... Again and again... Faster and faster... “Oh boy.” She makes for the arena, her hands stretched out, mother-mode on, “Everything's OK Hedy, it's alright. Easy now.”
“I’m off the program, he said I’m off the program. Where’s Marta, Marta needs to know and come, she-- I need Marta now, I’m going back to Marta, right?”
Hazel keeps a safe distance, watches Hedy's game with her thumb intensifies as she talks to herself, “Road 28 Westbound till Road 16 Northbound until the Provincial Truck Highway 3, before a right on Road 17 Northbound again, Northbound that’s correct, less than 7 miles, yes, yes.”
And Hazel manages to put a delicate hand on Hedy's shoulder as she guides her outside, “Let’s go in your trailer. We’ll look at maps, yes, we'll look at maps.”
Boggs looks at his boots like a puppy caught ravaging a leather couch, spots Oneida coming toward him.
“So that's it, eh? That's it?”
“We... We reckon she lied on her form saying she can ride and with that nasty Colorado low coming, we can’t-- We didn’t--”
“That’s all she had.”
“Oneida, look, kiddo, if you think I’m, like--”
“That’s all she had.”
“--happy about it, you’re dead wrong, it ain’t...”
“You two big men eh, crushing a kid under your boots like that.”
She stays in his face, big and strong. And Boggs limps away.
“If Marta comes tomorrow, I need to-- Yes, yes, packing, yes, suitcase with clothes, the toothbrush, I need-- Correct, the toothbrush in the bag, the toiletry bag.”
Not a single wrinkle on the bed, made better than J.R. could’ve done when he served. Her boots and slippers are aligned like little soldiers, her books ranked by size and neatly arranged on the clean shelves. It’s all pathologically orderly in her little trailer.
Hazel tries her best to act as a benzodiazepine, “Sit down for me, my love. Sit down and breathe” but Hedy tornadoes in her little space, deaf and breathless.
Hazel opens a massive bookmarked atlas on the desk and shows the maps to Hedy like showing a dog some treats to break the spell. “Wanna show me these roads you were talking about, eh?”
“The room has to be clean, no dust, it’s called a broom, yes, I need a broom to clean the dust.”
The bookmark is a postal card. A generic picture of a sunflower field somewhere in Ontario.
“Oh, how sweet, look at all these flowers. That’s nice, eh? Where is it, did you take this picture Hedy?”
“They look at the sun, they have necks and they look at the sun, east in the morning, west in the evening, like a very slow tennis game.”
“Do you want to sit down and look at it with me, Hedy?”
Hedy’s full of nervous ticks now, her body twitching as if she had electricity running in her veins. “They’re like us, they have a clock inside them, a biological clock, all of them, they all do that.”
Hazel glimpses outside but no one’s coming to the rescue, she’s on her own. “Hedy, just... Please, just sit with me.”
“See, in that picture, see? There’s one in the corner, it doesn’t face the sun, no, no, it faces the other way. It doesn’t fit in the field.”
Hazel spots an ill-looking sunflower looking downward in the bottom corner. “Well, I reckon it just needs a little–”
“See, Hedy? See? It’s just like you, this one, it doesn’t fit with the rest of the flowers, it’s facing the other way. There’s something inside it that makes it not work too well. You have the same thing, Hedy, and it’s always gonna be this way. Some things get to exist but they’re broken, they still get to live, but they’re anomalies, OK Hedy? They’re not meant to fit or belong, not meant to have a normal life, they’re just here, like lepers in the shadows.”
There’s a power outage in Hedy.
Her game with her thumbs stops. She lets herself slide against the wall until she sits on the floor, hugging her knees like toddlers hug their bears when there’s thunder. Hazel takes her silkiest voice, “Who told you that, Hedy? Who told you that story?”
But Hedy went missing.
Chapter III
